This is undoubtedly true, and the Poverty Action Lab’s policy briefcase outlines exactly why this is so. We legislate the issues we see in front of us, and women often have different priorities and outlooks than men. Despite this and despite America’s open voting laws (in which women in the electorate make up more than their share of the population), female participation in federal politics is dismal. 17 out of 100 senators (17%) and 75 out of 435 Representatives (17.2%) are female. This is pretty bad, especially when you consider that 53% of presidential election voters are female.

Other countries (France, Italy, Japan) have similarly poor showings of female elected officials, but I wondered… why not have quotas?

After all, America supports quotas for sectarian group in Iraq. There’s a long history of resistance to quotas in the U.S., but again, this number seems dismally low.

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How does the number of women elected compare to the number of women who run? It seems to me (and this is based on ZERO data) that there are fewer women who run for office.

On the other hand, don’t we want the politicians who most accurately and fervently defend the interests of their constituents, regardless of demographic? Shouldn’t we be colorblind and genderblind when evaluating politicians?

On your first point (less women running), this seems to be the case. Women are not any more or less likely to be elected to office than men, but they are far less likely to run. Perhaps this has to do with the bloodsport of American politics, but that seems to damage the public’s general well-being.

Also worth noting, neither party actively recruits women as much as it recruits men.

On your second point, we would LIKE all our politicians to represent us accurately regardless of demographic, but that’s just not the case. Empirical studies demonstrate that female legislators simply have different priorities than male legislators. Is it any surprise that black legislators seem to care more about civil rights for all races? Is it any surprise that gay legislators tend to push for civil rights for gay citizens?

I can’t ever imagine a quota working, because you are forcing someone’s hand in a vote. If 75% of voters were voting for men, and you had a quota system, you’d be telling some of them that their vote either doesn’t count or is wrong.

Quotas, be they official or unofficial, were hard enough to come by in the commercial and educational world. I cannot imagine it taking hold somewhere where the public “hiring” of a politician is so quantifiable, as with votes.

The answer probably lies much more in our culture, though it seems to be rather pervasive worldwide, so changing it any time soon in a major way seems pretty unlikely.